Learn Your Brain’s True Age and 7 Steps to “De-Age” It

Learn Your Brain’s True Age and 7 Steps to “De-Age” It

Chronological brain age isn’t the same as biological brain age.

Originally Published In Psychology Today

First, the good news.

Your brain doesn’t lose nerve cells as it ages nearly as much as we used to think. According to research by Dr. Morrison and colleagues at Mt. Sinai Medical School, earlier estimates that up to1% of neurons die off each year after the age of 25 turn out to be wrong, at least for people without neurodegenerative disease.

That means that you don’t have to lose mental abilities as you age. You might slow down a little  (for reasons I’ll explain in a moment), but you won’t necessarily dumb down.

Now the bad news. Notice I said that you won’t necessarily dumb down as you get older. The fact is, you could lose cognitive abilities if you don’t treat your brain right.

Brain tissue, it turns out, is a lot like muscle tissue:you must use it or lose it.

With muscles the “use it or lose it” principle is obvious because, well, we can see muscles (or lack of them).

For instance, we understand that, with vigorous exercise, older people can get  quite buff because we’ve seen photos like this of older folks who who work out…a lot!

© Dr. Eric Haseltine